People arrive at this subject two ways. Some want a smallholding and a solar array. Others have watched a film and wondered, idly, what they would actually do. The honest answer is that both need the same skills, because the zombies are optional and the fortnight without power is not. Thirty-one courses on water, producing your own power, growing and keeping your own food, holding heat in a cold house, and mending what breaks. Nothing here needs a bunker.
Water First
Water is the one you run out of first and the one you can least improvise. How much a household actually needs, how to store it safely, how to collect rain, and the difference between filtering water and making it safe to drink.
Water: Collect, Store, Filter
Coming soon
The First Fortnight
Then the boring competence: a kit that exists before you need it, and knowing what to do in the first hour of a power cut. Most emergencies end within two weeks, and this phase is the one that covers almost all of them.
Build a 72-Hour Emergency Kit
Coming soon
Surviving a Power Cut
Coming soon
Severe Weather and Storms
Coming soon
Power of Your Own
Understand electricity properly, then generate and store some. Theory first because off-grid power punishes guesswork, then outdoor circuits and a fully wired outbuilding running on its own supply.
Electrical Theory & Safe Working
Coming soon
Outdoor & Garden Electrics
Coming soon
Running Power to the Shed
Coming soon
Electronics: The Basics
Complete beginner
Heat and Shelter
Heat you do not lose is heat you never have to make, which is why insulation comes before any talk of stoves. Then the outbuilding that becomes your workshop, store, and backup room.
Insulating Your Home
Beginner
Shed & Workshop Planning
Coming soon
Building the Shed Structure
Coming soon
Insulating and Lining the Shed
Coming soon
Food You Grow
The part that takes a season to learn and a year to trust. Beds, seeds, a greenhouse to stretch the year at both ends, hens for eggs, and a compost heap that feeds the whole thing back into itself.
Food That Keeps
Growing food is half of it. A glut in August is worth nothing in February unless you can preserve it. Fermenting, pickling, potting, plus bread and cheese from scratch, and what the hedgerows give you for free.
Mend It or Do Without
Self-reliance is mostly repair. A sharp edge, a fixed tap, a working bike, and hands that can make a replacement out of a branch when no replacement is coming.
Home Repairs You Should Know
Complete beginner
How to Sharpen a Knife
Complete beginner
Bicycle Maintenance
Complete beginner
Whittling: Knife, Wood, Spoon
Coming soon
The Body and the Head
The equipment you cannot order in. First aid because help may be an hour away, strength because the work is physical, and a settled head because the people who cope are rarely the ones who panicked first.
First Aid Essentials
Coming soon
Strength Training
Complete beginner
How to Self-Regulate
Beginner